System76 announces UK shipping

System76, a US-based open-source specialist that sells desktops, laptops, and netbooks running the popular Ubuntu Linux distribution, has announced its intentions to broaden its borders with shipping to the UK.

Marking the company's first attempts to sell its wares internationally since it launched five years ago in the US and Canada, the news will come as an pleasant surprise to UK-based Linux-heads: System76's systems all come with Ubuntu pre-loaded and specially selected hardware that is guaranteed to be compatible with the open-source operating system.

Sadly, it's still very much in the experimental stage. The company admits that its power supplies don't have UK plugs, but promises to ship adapters that will allow the universal voltage PSUs to connect to UK electrics. Another issue is with keyboards, with all laptops and netbooks being supplied with US layout keyboards.

It is, however, a start - and given the lack of retailers of Linux-based systems in the UK since Dell jumped ship, a welcome one for the open source community in the UK.

The company's wares are far from the clunky, middle-of-the-road hardware associated with Linux machines, too: the Serval Professional laptop features a 15.6-inch full HD display, Nvidia GeForce graphics, and the option of an ultra-powerful Core i7-940XM 2.13GHz processor with 8GB of RAM and a 160GB solid-sate drive for storage.

As well as the power option, System76 sells an ultra-portable, the Lemur UltraThin. The 13.3-inch WXGA display makes it larger than the MacBook Air, but not by much - and the Intel Core i3-330UM 1.2GHz processor keeps the battery life high despite its diminutive size.

Sadly, details of the shipping cost to the UK are not yet available, with the option not quite live on the official site at the time of writing.